I-TOUCH: a generic multimodal framework for industry virtual prototyping

Simulations based on virtual reality techniques make often special arrangements for haptic rendering. In fact, in most cases, haptic rendering drives the design of the simulation engine. This work proposes alternative software architecture to handle multimodal and human centered interactive rendering with a particular emphasis for the computer haptics problem. Namely, the architecture allows handling both haptic devices requirements, in terms of high refresh rates, and physically-based simulations requirements, in terms of CPU time. The developed I-TOUCH framework is designed to address these issues; in the meantime, it provides an open architecture and powerful tools to benchmark robustness of subsequent algorithms. All undergoing developments are being tested with actual industry virtual prototyping scenarios, the complexity of some of which highlights the extent of the fundamental problems to overcome.